We are writing to you as we believe protecting consumers in Scotland and the U.K. falls within your respective Government offices.

Over the last few months we have become aware that as Scottish salmon producers win massive increases in export orders to China and the U.S.A. the U.K. market is being flooded with imports of factory farmed salmon from Norway and other countries.

Much of this is down to the Chinese Government boycotting Norwegian salmon for political reasons and Norwegian producers, who also own two-thirds of the floating factory fish farms in Scotland, getting around that ban by supplying China from their Scottish farms and in turn supplying the UK with salmon from their farms in Norway.

It is of course environmentally ludicrous that we should export our own produce half way across the globe while relying on imports to supply the domestic market. However we accept that there is little common sense in international commerce and there is nothing we can do about this.

What does concern us is that consumers in the United Kingdom are being conned by salmon producers and retailers. Despite the fact that the industry routinely shoots hundreds of seals every year, pollutes our seas, relies on chemicals and mass medication to keep their salmon alive and kill more wild fish to make food pellets than the number of salmon they harvest, Scottish salmon has a good reputation with consumers.

Factory fish farmers and retailers understand this and go out of their way to confuse consumers by giving their foreign farmed fish a distinct tartan tint.

Last Christmas customers in Morrisons were wooed by packets of tartan clad smoked salmon with the very Celtic moniker “Macrae” and the description “Scottish Quality” and “Scottish Smoked Salmon”. A picture of a braw Scottish castle was thrown in for good measure. I attach a photograph of that product.

Have a look and see how long it takes you to get past the iconic Scottish images and notice the little stamp beside the sell by date. Look carefully, it reads “Salmon farmed in Norway.” Of course this, although extremely misleading, is all quite legal because it reads “Scottish Smoked Salmon” and not “Smoked Scottish Salmon”.

However what we have uncovered in the last few weeks may overstep the legal boundary and go further than simply misleading and confusing consumers. Some months ago, in response to a query from myself (John Robins), Tesco admitted that most of their salmon is sourced from Norway. Earlier this year Sainsbury took advantage of this and produced a TV advertisement pointing out that their economy salmon was Scottish farmed while the Tesco equivalent was not.

Last month Tesco mounted a huge in store promotion and their fish monger departments up and down the country became more Scottish than Billy Connolly in a kilt at a ceilidh. Huge blue and white printed posters declaring “Our Finest fresh salmon 100% Scottish” and “100% Scottish salmon from our fishmonger”.

Some stores also used chalk boards with the word “SCOTTISH” written in large letters. To complete the Scottish saturation bombing Tesco used more saltires than Alex Salmond and his Cabinet could smuggle into Wimbledon. A roundel featuring the saltire with the phrase “I’m Scottish” above it was also placed on many of the display shelves. We visited circa 10 Tesco stores in Scotland (including stores in Ullapool, Inverness, Aviemore, Aberdeen, Perth, Milngavie and Edinburgh) and all had similar displays.

As, store by store, we informed the CEO at Tesco of the problem we received replies suggesting this situation was down to simple errors in the various stores. Tesco stated they had contacted the individual store managers regarding the 'I'm Scottish' labels “…. and they all passed on their apologies for them being misplaced.”

This excuse does not make sense to us. Apart from the chalk boards the point of sales material is all centrally produced and delivered to the stores with instructions about how it should be used. For so many stores to get it so very wrong at the same time suggests this was more than a coincidence.

This promotion has misled Tesco customers on a massive scale. As consumer Ministers we ask you to intervene to ensure that Tesco and other retailers are made fully aware of their legal duty to ensure their customers are fully informed of the source of the products on sale. U.K. sales of Norwegian salmon have increased tenfold in the last few years. Please ensure that this huge market share has not been gained through underhand sales tactics designed to con consumers in the U.K..

In addition we have discovered that some of the Tesco range of farmed salmon is not clearly labelled as “farmed”. Again this causes consumer confusion.

"Top management at Tesco recently admitted to me that only a small amount of their salmon is sourced in Scotland," said John Robins, Secretary of Animal Concern and Save Our Seals Fund. "Despite this they have saturated their stores with saltires, making their fish counters look more Scottish than Hogmanay and Burns Night combined. This is not just a red herring it is a blatant and very likely illegal attempt at misleading consumers into buying Norwegian salmon in the belief it is Scottish. I have reported one of their major West of Scotland stores to Trading Standards and trust they will take robust action against Tesco. It is bad enough that Scottish salmon farmers pollute our seas and kill our seals but to import Norwegian salmon while sending Scottish salmon to China and the USA just does not make sense. Tesco should not be putting up saltires – they should be giving their fishmongers Viking helmets and axes."

"Tesco's blatant breaches of Trading Standards makes a mockery of their claims to be promoting 'Scottish' salmon," said Don Staniford, Director of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture. "The fact is that Tesco is guilty of flooding the UK market with cheap farmed salmon from Norway. Tesco's advertising campaign claiming '100% Scottish Salmon' and 'I'm Scottish' is a scam, sham and a consumer con. If 'Scottish' farmed salmon is such a prized product then why are UK consumers being fobbed off with cheap imports of foreign farmed salmon? Surely Tesco should be selling exclusively Scottish salmon not flooding their supermarket shelves with Norwegian farmed salmon?"

04/03/2014

Marine Harvest, the world's largest salmon farming company, has finally announced plans to decontaminate the fish oil which is used to feed its farmed salmon - read their press release (3 April) online here

Whilst the decision to come clean is welcomed, why has it taken so long for Marine Harvest to attempt to wash the cancer-causing chemicals out of their fish feed? In fact, the salmon farming industry has known since the 1970s that fish feed is contaminated with chemicals such as DDT, dieldrin, dioxins and PCBs. As I wrote in my chapter - 'Silent Spring of the Sea' - in the award-winning book 'Stain Upon the Sea' (Harbour Publishing) published a decade ago in 2004:

The damning revelations of cancer-causing chemicals in farmed salmon, reported in the journal Science in 2004, were long known to the salmon farming industry (just as the tobacco industry knew about the effects of nicotine and the links between smoking and cancer decades before they became widely known publicly).

Back in 2007, the Pure Salmon Campaign urged the salmon farming industry to decontaminate the fish feed fed to their farmed salmon. Read a presentation - You Are What You Eat - by the Pure Salmon Campaign at the 2007 Seafood Summit:

The presentation included:

The presentation included photos of the various 'washing machines' available to decontaminate fish feed:

Just last month, the UK's biggest-selling newspaper (the Daily Mail), published damning findings of cancer-causing contaminants such as DDT and Dieldrin in Norwegian and Scottish farmed salmon on sale in supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland.